A Beat Box by the Artist, for the Artist

The BKE Beat Thang by Dallas Austin is a compact, cutting-edge sample-based hardware and software music production system, designed by two-time Grammy Award-winning producer Dallas Austin. Created by the artist, for the artist, the Beat Thang was built from the ground up to be a powerful, versatile, and totally portable sequencing sampler/drum machine.

With thousands of professional-quality sounds specifically designed for it, Beat Thang is ready to groove as soon as you take it out of the box. You can also add your own samples via one of the two SD card slots or record samples on-the-fly through the 1/4"-XLR combo input. And the best part: Beat Thang comes with an internal rechargeable battery and runs up to four hours of mobile use so you can lay beats at home, in the studio, on the road, or just about anywhere.

Learn more about the Beat Thang in this video by BKE:

Create Beats Anywhere

The Beat Thang is a portable, professional-grade drum machine. Its all-metal chassis is designed to withstand years on the road, so it's great for live performance, studio production, or just about anywhere you can imagine.

The Best of Both Worlds

The Beat Thang takes the tactile bliss of a hardware-based sequencing sampler, and adds computer connectivity so you can adjust settings and fine-tune parameters on your Mac or PC. The software runs as a standalone application, or as a plug-in in a DAW environment.

Explosive Original Sounds

Beat Thang is a true 21st century sampler -- loaded with original, modern sounds all designed specifically for it. Its internal library sounds amazing -- and it ought to, since the folks over at BKE spent over three years compiling thousands of original sounds relevant to today's popular genres. Select from thousands of sounds on 168 provided drum kits. House, techno, rock, pop, hip hop, or rap -- you name it -- pick a style and Beat Thang will have the kit to play it.

BKE Beat Thang by Dallas Austin

Brought to you by BKE and 2-time Grammy winner Dallas Austin, the Beat Thang is a breakthrough product in the world of sample-based music production. The world's first fully- portable professional workstation, Beat Thang allows you to create your own beats, grooves, and electronic music compositions wherever and whenever you want. Pick from an extensive array of thousands of original, high-quality sounds, upload your own, or plug in a mic and record samples with ease. Designed to feel and play more instrument-like than other workstations, Beat Thang's expressive controls and no-nonsense workflow make laying down tracks quick and surprisingly easy.

Beat Thang's innovative controls and rugged, portable design makes this standalone sampling studio all you need to make beats and grooves on the go. Every control surface, from the velocity-sensitive chromatic pads to the side-mounted pitch and modulation wheels, was engineered to give you greater artistic control over your samples and manipulating effects. With function-dedicated buttons, a useful file-filtering system, and multi-purpose scroll knobs, navigating Beat Thang's menus and directories is a cinch.

Great music starts with great sounds. That's why BKE paired up with the best producers and players to bring you a massive, all-original sound library packed with over 3000 premium electronica, dance, hip hop, funk, R&B, rock, pop, and world samples, chops, and loops. Also included with Beat Thang is an impressive collection of over 1000 premium samples from the private collection of Grammy-winning super-producer Dallas Austin.

This is just the beginning, as the Beat Thang allows you to edit and manipulate just about every aspect of your samples through advanced waveform editing, non-destructive autochop, timestretch, and pitch-shifting features, as well as over 60 studio-quality effects. This state-of- the-art beat machine gives you all of the layering, slicing, sampling, and sound-creation tools you need to make fully polished tracks, while over 300 pre-constructed kits, patterns, and acoustic and electronic instruments give you loads of content to hit the ground running.

While Beat Thang is a fully independent production workstation, it's extensive I/O lets you seamlessly connect to your other gear. Plug in your external controller, keyboards, or sound modules with MIDI In/Out and multi-functional USB A and B ports, and quickly load your samples and projects through USB keys, external hard drives, or through one of two (2) 32 GB SD card slots. An XLR combo jack with Phantom Power lets you record mics or guitars directly on the Beat Thang, and BKE's AU/VST plug-in software, aptly named Beat Thang Virtual, offers file sharing, drag/drop functionality, and DAW integration rarely seen in a true hardware device.

The team at BKE is fully committed to being there for you. You will receive free, lifetime live technical support from trained engineers and producers, as well as access to tons of online training and tutorial video content. And because the Beat Thang operating system is capable of future online upgrades via USB, BKE offers lifetime free upgrades so you can enjoy software and firmware enhancements for years to come.

With excellent build-quality, an impressive workflow, and a vast feature and all-original sound set, Beat Thang is quickly emerging as one of the most popular options in the world for sample- based production, groove-making, and live performance.

zZounds has verified that this customer bought this product from us.
"Not great, just a nice piece of hardware."

Overall:
First off let me tell you that I have 0 musical ability! After playing with this for about an hour, I had my first decent sounding track! Some of the samples are downright horrible while others are top notch! I Love my Thang, The only bad thing about this is the software!! Save often as it will crash on a regular basis guaranteed. I was just playing a track that I just made and halfway through a pitch bent note, it froze even with the new OS.. It is very well constructed with a readable screen even in sunlight. Pads feel nice but after mashing on them for an hour, your fingers begin to hurt :D All in all a fun piece of hardware!

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""The Most Slept On Drum Machine""

Overall:
As an early adopter of the Beat Thang Virtual. I can honestly say I was skeptical about the hardware. After my recent purchase of the Beat Thang, I can honestly say that it was one of THE BEST purchases I've made. The software and/or firmware is very stable. Audio Quality is pristine. Sequencer is tight... with a cool swing option to humanize the stiffness of your drum cadence. The abundance of sounds and expansion sound paks! THE BEAT THANG is not going to make you an overnight producer(that is for you so-called 15 minute producers) but it is a well built Drum Machine/Sequencer that works... And it works well! The Lithium Ion actually last about 2-3hours after a full charge. The Beat Thang is in its own category, an addition to your collection...!

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